It was adapted by screenwriter Norman Wexler from Nik Cohn""s fictionalNew York Magazinestory "Tribal Rites of the New Saturday Night" published on June 7th, 1976.He became annoyed by the birthday cake, decorated with a cute ogre face named Sprinkles, and was insulted by the comparison.He was confronted by former student Tom Marvolo Riddle, who revealed himself as"a memory, preserved in a diary for 50 years.This filmic model of the ""wrong man"" was also found inYoung and Innocent (1937),Saboteur (1942), andThe Man Who Knew Too Much (1956), and culminated in Hitchcock""s similarNorth by Northwest (1959)twenty-four years later - it is widely considered his "AmericanThirty-Nine Steps.Three months after the film made its debut, Clarke published a novel based upon the film""s screenplay.